Who will write the Kent Walz story?

Within weeks, maybe days, sworn testimony from a number of people will confirm that APS' Executive Director of Communications Monica Armenta has for many, many years, been defaming me through slander and libel, to her friends in the establishment media; broadcast and print.





If we searched the email and text records of former APS School Board President Paula Maes for evidence of her part in the defamation, as board member and President of the New Mexico Broadcasters Assoc, we would find Maes' aid and abet in the slander and libel.

On the one hand, you can hardly blame them for taking the word of their friend Monica Armenta.  They will tell you they hold her, and by logical extension what she tells them, in deep regard.

She convinced them to pay no attention to the bellicose old shop teacher and what he was saying about corruption and incompetence in the leadership of the APS.  She convinced them that I am crazy and dangerous.

They never asked her for evidence, they never asked to see any proof.

During sworn deposition, Armenta will be asked to show us the proof; proof that I have ever said or done anything to be ashamed of.  She will be asked to point to anything I ever did, that I would not do again, in front of any of thousands of students I have talked to about their character, and how much it counts.  It is, I told them, the only thing you will ever have that cannot be taken away from you.  You have to give it away. 

Former School Board Member David Robbins was asked to point to proof.  He could not.

APS School Board President, Defendant Marty Esquivel was asked to point to proof.  He could not.

The only proof there is, is that the leadership of the APS has circulated emails and texts among them, desiring only to fan the flames of their false allegations and drum up hysteria and fear.  It is Brooks, Lucero and Casaus who brought up gun and knife-play not me. 

For two decades, I have been fighting to get the leadership of the APS to come clean on Character Counts!.  For two decades, rather than come clean, they have subjected me to investigation and surveillance in some hope of documenting some misconduct, a bullet with which to shoot the messenger, wikilink.  This isn't about the messenger; it is about the message;

If we really want students to grow into adults who embrace character and courage and honor, someone has to show them what it looks like.

The hypocrisy of expecting students to hold themselves accountable to higher standards of conduct than their adult role models is categorically unacceptable. Removing the role modeling clause

in no case shall the standards of conduct for adults
be lower than the standards for students

from their own standards of conduct was and still is, indefensible.

It makes no difference what anyone thinks about the propriety of the Pillars of Character Counts! as standards of conduct for students.  The fact is they are APS student standards of conduct and have been since they were unanimously adopted by the APS Board of Education in 1994.

What ever Journal Managing Editor Kent Walz and the rest can say, they cannot say that they are not fully aware that the entire leadership of the APS has abdicated their responsibilities as role models of student standards of conduct.  It is his and their deliberate decision to help cover it up.

They cannot deny their conflicting interests.

On the one hand they want to protect Armenta and the rest from the consequences of their corruption and incompetence.

On the other, they have obligations to those who read, watch and listen to them with the expectation that they are being told the truth about the wielding of power and the spending of resources that are fundamentally their own.

That they caved to former at the expense of the later is self-evident.

At this point, Walz and the rest are covering up their own journalistic malpractice as well as the scandal in the leadership of the APS.

The truth is going to come out; in sworn deposition and in sworn testimony in court.  The truth is going to convict Esquivel, Armenta, Brooks, Tellez, Chavez, and it is going to convict Walz.

But Journal readers are never going to read about the Journal's part in the cover up of the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.  Nobody is going to watch it on TV; no one is going to hear it on the radio.

Before any of the establishment's media can report credibly on the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS, they will have to report credibly on their failure to do so heretofore.

And that is something they're not about to do.




photos Mark Bralley
Walz photo ched macquigg
the out of focus illustrates the reason why I rarely, if ever, take my own photographs